


This world is not made for you

by towardsmorning



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: (very brief mention), Canon Character of Color, Gen, Trans Character, allusion to anxiety, background canon pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:12:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towardsmorning/pseuds/towardsmorning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they arrive, there's six of them. This number drops to five within seventy two hours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This world is not made for you

**Author's Note:**

> So this is mostly an attempt at nailing down an image of Carlos that got out of hand, as well as me wondering _what the hell happened to all those other scientists_? It turned into 2500 words or so, and did I mention I started it before First Date and had to edit it to fit with that image of Carlos? Because that sure was a thing that happened.

When they arrive, there's six of them. Carlos, Annie, June, Naomi, Alex and Sydney. That number drops down to five within the first seventy two hours.

"This is-" Sydney starts, angry and on edge, his eyes darting around as he fumbles with car keys. He steadfastly avoids looking back towards the town or at Carlos. When he finally manages to wrench the door open a moment later, Carlos can see that tension start to bleed out of him a little; he sags against the car's frame and mutters quietly, "You know, this is just a set up for something anyway, probably."

Carlos can't think of anything to say to that. He's not fantastic with words at the best of times, and trying to come up with ones that will support the argument that no, the lights in the sky are too _there_ to be anything but real, those pulsating stones included free in every residence are just too much to be a trick of the light- well, he doesn't think he'd succeed. Besides, he can see that Sydney's made his mind up, had probably made his mind up twenty minutes after they arrived.

This town, with its lights and stones and those flickers in the corner of your eye that happen just often enough that you can almost feel yourself getting used to it, this town terrifies Carlos too. But when Sydney gestures to the open door and raises his eyebrows, Carlos' head shakes seemingly of its own accord and he takes a step backwards, glancing at the road into town behind him without meaning to. When he turns back around, Sydney is getting in, scowling. His eyes dart around as though waiting for something terrible to happen, to trap him here. Carlos has to admit that he wouldn't put it past the place to take offence at being left, but the night stays undisturbed around them.

"Suit yourself," Sydney says waspishly, nervousness raising his voice. Once the car door has been slammed he seems to relent, however, and he rolls the window down before starting the engine, leaning out. "I'll call when I get back, okay?"

"Sure," Carlos says. "Drive safe."

*

June manages to hold out for another week and a half, which is a little longer than Carlos had expected. By this stage they all seem to be speeding through some sort of warped version of the five stages of grief, he thinks, having gotten past 'denial' pretty quickly if only because it doesn't seem to be much of a survival trait in this town for an outsider. Carlos is pretty sure he's stuck on bargaining. It's the only explanation for the increasingly desperate way he's going after the locals, like if only there turns out to be _one_ person he can prise some sort of answer from...

June, meanwhile, is holding steady in the 'anger' stage. Carlos supposes this is probably more fruitful than his attempts to get that seemingly nice old woman to explain all the references to angels that he repeatedly assures suspicious men, quite truthfully, he does not believe exist.

"Do you hear them talk?" she says, or rather shouts through an open door at him as she hastily repacks the single suitcase she'd brought, the room already bare and empty-looking. She hasn't been here long enough for the place to look lived in.

"Who?" he says, "I mean, specifically, because-"

"They're going to fucking murder us in our beds, Carlos," she continues, as though he hadn't spoken. Carlos is pretty used to that, though, so he just half-shrugs and lets her continue at her own pace.

He's definitely heard plenty of talk, about three quarters of which is the type of inane small town talk he half-recalls from his childhood. The other quarter is, admittedly, highly disturbing and also typically delivered in the exact same tone as the first type of talk. Sometimes he honestly almost wonders if people so apathetic about all the corpses that seem to appear in this place would really care enough to bother murdering them, though it's pretty shaky logic. But mostly everyone he's talked to so far has been perfectly pleasant, as his mother would say, 'in their own way'.

(He's also heard, and taken note, of plenty of people _not_ talking, a thing he has likewise plenty of experience in- not talking about the hooded figures, or that one sort of indefinable _mass_ in the park, or the way you're as likely to wake up to screams as you are to an alarm clock. It's the comfortable sort of silence that's borne of routine. Why talk, after all, about what everyone already knows?)

June slamming her suitcase shut startles him. Carlos is jumpy these days. "You're seriously going to stay?" she asks a little coldly, which Carlos takes to mean in her case that she's worried; June does that, fusses and hates herself for it and squirrels it away underneath irritation. He'll miss her.

"It probably won't be much longer," he says, smiling reassuringly. "They'll probably want us back soon if we don't turn up anything useful, right?" In spite of everything, the idea isn't actually all that appealing. If he left Night Vale with all those theories and nothing to prove them, Carlos doesn't think he'd ever stop thinking about it. The idea of ruminating on Night Vale's mysteries for his entire life isn't a good one. He's already run into far too many things that he's never going to get out of his head in this town, which already slipped through his fingers before he had the chance to get anything solid. Night Vale is so chaotic that they always seem to be scrambling to catch up. There hasn't been a single day since they arrived that _something_ that's completely unrepeatable hasn't happened.

It doesn't help, Carlos thinks slightly sourly, that people are already leaving.

"Say hi to Sydney for me," he says after she's spent a few moments fuming in silence.

"Yeah," June says, terse, hefting her case onto one shoulder with ease. "I'll tell him what a stubborn dick you're being."

*

Alex and Naomi leave together.

Two months in and at this stage, _everyone_ has lasted longer than Carlos had originally predicted, including himself, and he'd been the one amongst them who had actually volunteered. They stop by while he's fiddling around in the abandoned building they're still in the process of trying to turn into a functioning lab; the lights still don't work, the whole room has a perpetually grubby air that no amount of cleaning has eradicated and the air conditioning is sketchy at best but on the plus side, Night Vale's ban on writing means that there's much less paperwork around than Carlos is used to.

Naomi switches off the radio as she enters. "I was, er, listening to that," Carlos protests, because he can tell what they're here to announce and he doesn't want to hear it yet. Night Vale isn't quite that gaping void of an unknown it was when they first drove up, thrilling and awful and vast all at once, but the possibility of having to face it essentially alone isn't one he really wants looming over his shoulder. Not in a town that takes metaphors like _looming over his shoulder_ a little too literally for comfort.

"I wish you wouldn't," Alex says, as expected. "None of us need to hear all that..." the sentence trails off, Alex apparently either lacking an adjective or sensing Carlos' defensiveness, something they've been teasing him about since he first started listening to Cecil's show against all their protests.

"It was quiet," he says, and doesn't say _well his voice is nice and he keeps mentioning me, which is probably the only reason anyone who lives here even remembers us._ It's one of those things that probably sounds better, more objectively _true_ in his head.

Naomi shakes her head and says, "Look, never mind. We wanted to- say goodbye. We've already seen Annie."

Carlos nods and asks, against his better judgement, "Are you sure?"

The look they give him suggests that this wasn't a good thing to ask. Alex in particular looks as though they want to drag him off just for asking it, as though it's confirmation that he can't be trusted with his own well being in this place. But it does seem to persuade them not to ask him if _he's_ sure about staying; or perhaps they'd already given it up as a lost cause and didn't need persuading at all.

He flicks the radio back on when they leave and turns the volume all the way up.

*

Annie lets him know in advance, which is nice of her. He does wonder if it's to give him the option of throwing in the towel and coming along himself, but the week she spends getting ready to leave goes by without any mention of the idea, so he's spared that for the second time. It's something he sort of thinks he should thank her for, except all the attempts he makes in his head end up sounding like _thanks for abandoning me to my fate_ and he doesn't know how to make that sound sincere, which it is. Sort of.

Carlos still isn't happy about being the last one left, but he's happier about it than he is about the idea of going back, which is something at least. He's also stopped thinking about the idea as 'going home', which is... also something. Probably something to be worried about, but Carlos is approaching a state where worry is so omnipresent that it's ceased to even register as more than throbbing background noise, which is a novelty if he's entirely honest with himself. He does try to be, but Night Vale makes it difficult sometimes to know what even counts as true. Accidents happen.

Even so, his chest clenches a little as she finishes loading her car up, then clenches a lot. It's noon- supposedly- and the late September sun is beating down on his neck. He blames the heat for the way his breath catches when she slams the trunk of her car; tells himself that he's tired and sweating and his binder is too tight for the hundred and five degree heat and that he isn't going to have a panic attack the moment her car drives out of sight, that it's nothing serious, the way his heart is seizing. Unfortunately Carlos has a sinking suspicion that he's simply going to be tired, sweaty and struggling to breathe while having a panic attack.

"Well," Annie says, trying for cheerful and actually succeeding quite well. "This is it, then."

She reaches out and touches his wrist, gently. "You'll be all right." She sounds more certain than Carlos had expected, and he smiles in response, unexpected and shaky but genuine nonetheless. "You fit in well here, you know."

"I don't... know about that," Carlos says, faltering slightly. Even so, the words make him smile wider, and the tight knot in his chest, while still there, loosens a little, enough that he can swallow.

"Sure you do," she says, "you lasted this long. And you're the only one of us who got to know anyone here and didn't just run away if they got cornered by someone in the street. The rest of us just weren't cut out for it, you know?"

"I'll miss you," he blurts out.

"I'll miss you too," she says, unlocking her car door. Carlos suddenly gets deja vu, wishes he were better with words so he could delay her somehow. Even so, her words seem to wrest his panic back under control. After a moment she turns back to him and extends a hand. "I'm glad we got to work together, even if it wasn't exactly ideal." They shake, and it feels oddly like some kind of agreement has been reached, even moreso when she nods thoughtfully and drops his hand. "I'll tell the others." She doesn't elaborate. Carlos isn't sure he'd want to hear anything more specific, anyway- not to expect him back, that he's a lost cause, who knows.

"Er... say hello from me, too." He hasn't, Carlos realises, spoken to anyone like he'd promised them, though he's sure that he'd somehow been made aware they'd made it home just fine. "And call," he adds, though he doesn't think he sounds all that convinced. Annie smiles but doesn't answer, so she probably isn't either.

So she gets in her car and drives away, and Carlos does panic a little as the car kicks up dust and speeds off, but at least half the panic is on her behalf and a few minutes taking deep, dry breaths is enough to calm him. The desert is flat in every direction, and Carlos watches until the car has vanished, and then starts off towards the lab.

His phone buzzes in his pocket; he gets it out, frowning. To his surprise it isn't Annie with a last minute request. Instead it's Cecil, who Carlos keeps forgetting has his number, and who Carlos does not ever recall having ever given it in the first place. Usually he ignores Cecil's more-than-occasional texts, not out of any malice but more out of a complete confusion as to what Cecil actually wants from him; Carlos keeps looking for the puzzle in Cecil's entirely unsubtle affections, sure that somehow he's just missed something, that it can't be that simple.

The sun is starting to set, a good six hours ahead of schedule. Carlos imagines Annie speeding back towards what he finds himself thinking of as _the real world,_ and remembers what Annie had told him about fitting in here. Cecil wants to know if they can meet for coffee, something about an incident that is, in Cecil's words, _**very** scientific!!!_ , which will probably defy everything he's ever learned and, naturally, be of no real concern to anyone who lives here beyond, perhaps, idle curiosity.

There's only him left now, and nobody around to tease. Carlos sighs, smiles, and begins to type out his answer, squinting in the low light.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Run Boy Run by Woodkid.
> 
> (Oh, and by the way, though it barely comes up, I am totally onboard with Carlos as trans*, hence the binder mention.)


End file.
